by Rem Rieder, USA TODAY

by Rem Rieder, USA TODAY

So much of the talk about journalism these days revolves around new business models and clicks and platforms.

It's easy to forget about the underlying public service role of the field, the reason the press gets singled out for protection under the First Amendment.

Journalism at its best is about truth-telling, about providing people with information they need to understand their world. It's a deeply imperfect enterprise - and a critically important one. And sometimes those carrying it out pay the ultimate price.

Another reminder of journalism's heft came with the death Sunday of former Philadelphia Daily News columnist Chuck Stone, a man whose writing engendered such trust in the community that scores of criminal suspects surrendered to him rather than to the police, a man who once successfully negotiated a hostage situation at a prison at great personal risk.

Niedringhaus and Gannon were shot by a police commander in the perilous terrain of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. No surprise that they were there. The mission reflected their determination to get close to the story, the real story, the real people, whatever the risk.

Carlotta Gall, no stranger to danger herself during her many years covering Afghanistan for The New York Times, was with the two AP journalists just before the fatal journey.

Gall, now the Times' Tunis bureau chief, warned them of reports she was hearing of rampant Taliban attacks planned for that Friday targeting foreigners and government officials.

"But Anja and Kathy took it in stride," Gall wrote. "They knew the dangers."

They went to Khost because that is what they did.

Just two years ago, two splendid journalists lost their lives in combat zones within a week of each other.

Anthony Shadid succumbed to an asthma attack while covering the fighting in Syria for The New York Times. He was said to have been allergic to horses, and he was being smuggled by horseback out of Syria, largely off-limits to Western journalists, when he was stricken.

Marie Colvin, an American-born war correspondent for Britain's Sunday Times, was killed along with French photojournalist Remi Ochlik when the media center where they were working was shelled by the Syrian army.

Like Niedringhaus and Gannon, both were known for their determination to put a human face on warfare, for their firsthand reportage on war's impact rather than settling for bland pronouncements by policymakers.

In a 2004 interview with American Journalism Review's Sherry Ricchiardi, Shadid summed up his approach: "You want to find the human moment â?? that's your challenge as a reporter. And you have to be on the scene to do that."

It's easy to see war correspondents as adrenaline junkies, as adventurers who get off on the boom-boom and the risk. But Colvin, who had lost an eye covering combat, hated being portrayed that way. "I don't do this for fun," she once said. "I do it because it is necessary."

Stone, who crusaded against injustice in his columns, was a different type of journalist, but also a brave and impressive one. In addition to that prison negotiation, he was once summoned by bank robbers holding a hostage. Stone defused that situation, too.

All told, 75 suspects reluctant to turn themselves in to the Philadelphia police because of the beatings they feared might ensue surrendered to Stone in the Daily News newsroom.

He was, former Daily News editorial page editor Rich Aregood wrote on Facebook, "the only Underground Railroad for criminal suspects a newspaper ever maintained."